In a vehicle black box system including an image storage device, when an impact is applied to a vehicle or a specific event, such as sudden brake, is generated, the image data of the outside or inside of a vehicle is recorded and stored.
The vehicle black box system processes image captured by a camera provided toward the outside or inside of a vehicle using power supplied from a vehicle battery and then stores the processed image in a storage medium.
In a method for storing an image according to the detection of an event in the vehicle black box system, in order to sense an event, various sensors, such as a gyroscope sensor, an acceleration sensor, an angular velocity sensor, an impact sensor, and a vibration sensor, may be used.
Accordingly, in the vehicle black box system, a threshold has been previously set or has been directly set by a user, and thus an event may be recognized as having been generated only when a value measured by a sensor exceeds the corresponding threshold.
That is, it is determined whether a value measured by the sensor is a predetermined threshold or more while the sensor is monitored. If, as a result of the determination, the measured value does not exceed the threshold, an event is considered to have not been generated.
If, as a result of the determination, the measured value exceeds the threshold, however, an event is considered to have been generated. The image data of the outside or inside of the vehicle is recorded and stored using an image storage device included in the vehicle black box system.
Furthermore, if a storage space is not sufficient due to limits to the capacity of a storage device 50, the oldest image is deleted and overwritten by a new image. Accordingly, there was a problem in that the vehicle black box system does not play its unique role because data including an image at the time of an accident, such as an actual impact event, is deleted.
Accordingly, storage efficiency of an inputted image is increased using a heavy weight compression scheme, such as H.264, through a codec 30.
However, there was a problem in that great power is consumed because much operation and much memory access are required to use heavy weight compression.
Moreover, image data for a specific time before and after a motion sensing event or an impact event is generated when the event is generated while the vehicle black box system operates in parking mode has to be recorded and stored.
That is, the vehicle black box continues to temporarily store images, voices, and other data because when an event is generated is unknown. Accordingly, there was a problem in that consumed power is not greatly reduced compared to a case where a vehicle drives because accessories, such as a camera module 10, the codec 30, and the storage device 50 forming the vehicle black box as shown in FIG. 1, operate.